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Intel's 10th Gen Comet Lake for Desktops: Skylake-S Hits 10 Cores and 5.3 GHz

Today we get the full range of its Intel's 10th Generation processors for desktops. These chips, which fall under the banner of 'Comet Lake', will now go up to 10 cores and offer turbo speeds up to 5.3 GHz. Comet Lake is the fifth iteration of Intel's very profitable Skylake microarchitecture, built on Intel's 14++nm process, at a time when the competition is on 7nm with sixteen cores. The crux, according to Intel, is that it will offer the best gaming experience in this market.

Users wanting the 10-core 5.3 GHz will need to purchase the new top Core i9-10900K processor, which has a unit price of $488, and keep it under 70 ºC to enable Intel's new Thermal Velocity Boost. Not only that, despite the 125 W TDP listed on the box, Intel states that the turbo power recommendation is 250 W – the motherboard manufacturers we've spoken to have prepared for 320-350 W from their own testing, in order to maintain that top turbo for as long as possible.

The range of 32 (!) new processors from Intel will vary from two core Celeron parts at 35 W all the way up to ten-core Core i9 hardware rated for 125 W, with per-unit pricing from $42 to $488. The standard rated TDP is 65 W, with the overclocked models at 125 W, the low-power T models at 35 W, and Pentium/Celeron at 58 W. All of the Core i3, i5, i7, and i9 processors will have HyperThreading, making the product stack a lot easier to understand. Certain models will also have F variants without integrated graphics, which will have a slightly lower per-unit cost.

[.....] For security, Intel is applying the same modifications it had made to Coffee Lake, matching up with the Cascade Lake and Whiskey Lake designs. The fix for [Meltdown] V3a has now changed from 'Firmware' to 'MCU', suggesting that Intel has added a microcontroller as a fix. We have asked Intel for clarification. Intel is now claiming that [Meltdown] V4 is fixed through a combination of hardware and OS fixes.

Intel's performance utility will now allow users to disable hyperthreading on a per-core basis.

AnandTech suggests comparing the Intel Core i9-10900F (~$422) to AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (~$432), i3-10500 (~$192) and i3-10400F (~$152) to Ryzen 5 3600 (~$173), and i9-10900KF (~$472) to the 3900X or Ryzen 9 3950X (~$722).

Also at Tom's Hardware and Wccftech.

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